> His reports have led to at least 2,721 penalty points, £168,568 in fines and, as he proudly displays in his X (Twitter) bio, “36 drivers DISQUALIFIED”.
I would like to borrow this guy for the road in front of my children's school.
Society only moves forward through the actions of a few whose behaviour is so out of the norm that we would consider it crazy. However, one must commend whatever organizational structure allows for this man’s reports to actually yield consequences. In the Bay Area, these will go nowhere.
I’ve fantasized about carrying a bullhorn on my bike and just calling people out: “hey you in the Tesla, put your phone down!” Sadly the enforcement of the hands free law where I live is nonexistent. What’s surprising to me about this article is that the police will actually act on this guy’s tips and evidence.
It does vary wildly across the UK. I've had success with reporting in Avon&Somerset, but other areas have the police creating excuses for the drivers and finding any reason to blame the cyclist.
Since this site has a very international audience, it's quite important to make clear: there's not some road safety inspired reason for this. Mickey is an adrenaline junky who loves to start fights in public and he's found a way to do that in a mostly legal way. Sometimes, a little less legal, like when he lept onto the bonnet of a car in order to feign he'd been run over, or when he threw his bicycle into the path of an oncoming car endangering pretty much everyone in the situation (interestingly, a situation in which the author of this article seems to imply the car was to blame, not Mikey for deliberately throwing his bike into the path of the car, calculatingly not actually throwing himself into the path).
The guy has got sucked into a sort of spiral where he's going out to create these confrontations (partly to monetize on youtube), and he will, eventually cause some serious harm to himself or someone else. This article kind of misses that this isn't a story about road safety, it's more a story about how people can self-radicalise and how social media has created a profit incentive for them to do so.
It's difficult to watch a motorist threaten to take his own life if this guy reports him and then remember that actually, that's happening for ad revenue.
Oh, this is the "Gandalf Corner" guy[1], who has a lot of videos of himself blocking people trying to drive on the wrong side of the road to skip the queue at an intersection. What always gets me is how smug and entitled the people are, even when they realize he's not going to back down. That and the silly "I'm going to get away with this because I always have" grins his subjects alway seem to have. Good job to this guy.
I walk around North London a lot and after a recent day of various hijinx involving careless drivers, I looked into bodycams with an eye to just having one run as I walk around to capture the various dangerous transgressions and then report onwards to the relevant authorities.
But, the more I looked into it, the more self-conscious I got that a) I would be a sad curmudgeon to do such a thing and, b) I'd be sleep-walking into some horrid authority-complicit sousveillance that raises uncomfortable questions.
Still, I'd really like to report those [expletive deleted]s who skip over pedestrian crossings at speed, on their phone. Gits.
Is there a cheap and convenient way to have a front/back camera on your bike, yet? Or a bike helmet with inconspicous front+rear camera? I'm aware of the Garmin Varia line, but it's quite expensive and I don't care about the radar.
Also expensive, but the best options for cyclists are the Cycliq front and rear cameras/lights. They're best fitted to the bike and provide excellent footage along with being easy to manage (they overwrite old recordings automatically unless they're marked as being an incident where the camera goes onto its side).
Helmet cameras may compromise the "protection" provided by a cycle helmet though cycle helmets are next to useless in a multi vehicle collision anyway.
I'm a cyclist, pedestrian and car driver - I hate the echo chamber approach.
I'm sure there is a lot positive to be said for his work; unfortunately he - like many (most?) on each side in the cyclists vs cars vs pedestrians debate - is as much an idealogue as anybody, often unwilling to acknowledge the excesses and poor behaviour of cyclists - leaving him untrustworthy as a good faith participant, while allowing his video evidence as useful in more balanced hands.
And as always, when this debate comes up, the reply is very simple: pedestrians and bicyclists don't endanger other people's lives, car drivers do. That is really where the discussion should start and finish.
by the way just by looking at a few of his videos he never excuses cyclists not following the rules and even calls them out https://youtu.be/FnBaO747PZw?t=666
> Not many people die by cannibalism every year, do they? But are we suggesting that because not many people die by cannibalism, we don’t actually introduce legislation to outlaw it?
Uhm no because there are no downsides to a law against cannibalism. There are significant downsides to a law requiring number plates on bicycles. What an idiot.
There's a much less effective guy in Germany who does a similar thing, but for parking violations. He'll ride around in his small town until he finds someone whose car is 20 cm from the curb instead of the maximum allowable 15 cm, or a car is 199 cm from a hydrant instead of the required 200 cm, or some similar insignificant situation.
He documents these "transgressions", and submit it to the police. He calculates that he's brought the city hundreds of thousands of Euros in revenue.
Except the police ignore all of his reports because they're mostly nit-picky bullshit.
> Now in his 50s, Erp was 19 and still living in his hometown of Harare, Zimbabwe, when he got the call from a local shopkeeper telling him that a drunk driver had collided with his father, who was riding a motorbike. By the time he arrived on the scene, it was too late. He found his father’s body under a blanket. “I’m long past that”, he says in his thick Zimbabwean accent, swilling his tea. “But my feeling is that if I can save someone else that experience, then that’d be quite a good thing.”
This might explain a mystery I was pondering - I cycled up to St Pancras station and some guy I'd never seen before said "no one likes you" which puzzled me but looking at the article my appearance is pretty much like Cycling Mikey.
While he probably does a good job, it seems a bit over the top. I don't see that much bad driving in central London. Quite a lot of iffy cycling though especially from the deliveroo guys.
Where I struggle with Mikey is that he really pushes the envelope of what a civilian is supposed to do.
- Filming his commutes - fine
- Reporting when people put him in harm's way - more than fine
- Reporting people he sees who don't endanger him personally but are breaking the rules and could create dangerous situations - probably fine, though getting a little iffy for me
- Going out of his way to look into people's cars and look for phone use - pretty iffy
- Deliberately creating confrontation and direct danger, out of other drivers illegal driving - too far for sure (look up "Gandalf corner")
It is sucky that the police don't do more of this enforcement. But as another London cyclist, he crosses the line that makes me feel less safe as a cyclist, due to the elevated level of hate cyclists receive.
25 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 57.5 ms ] threadI would like to borrow this guy for the road in front of my children's school.
The guy has got sucked into a sort of spiral where he's going out to create these confrontations (partly to monetize on youtube), and he will, eventually cause some serious harm to himself or someone else. This article kind of misses that this isn't a story about road safety, it's more a story about how people can self-radicalise and how social media has created a profit incentive for them to do so.
It's difficult to watch a motorist threaten to take his own life if this guy reports him and then remember that actually, that's happening for ad revenue.
Line of Sight definitely had a London section, though it is quite old now https://youtu.be/0npCFw9TEnA?t=1720
1: https://www.youtube.com/@CyclingMikey/videos
But, the more I looked into it, the more self-conscious I got that a) I would be a sad curmudgeon to do such a thing and, b) I'd be sleep-walking into some horrid authority-complicit sousveillance that raises uncomfortable questions.
Still, I'd really like to report those [expletive deleted]s who skip over pedestrian crossings at speed, on their phone. Gits.
Looking at your phone while driving is extremely dangerous, please don’t do it.
‘I felt powerless – so I started filming’: CyclingMikey on his one-man battle with dangerous drivers (126 points, 221 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29810943
Helmet cameras may compromise the "protection" provided by a cycle helmet though cycle helmets are next to useless in a multi vehicle collision anyway.
I'm sure there is a lot positive to be said for his work; unfortunately he - like many (most?) on each side in the cyclists vs cars vs pedestrians debate - is as much an idealogue as anybody, often unwilling to acknowledge the excesses and poor behaviour of cyclists - leaving him untrustworthy as a good faith participant, while allowing his video evidence as useful in more balanced hands.
Uhm no because there are no downsides to a law against cannibalism. There are significant downsides to a law requiring number plates on bicycles. What an idiot.
He documents these "transgressions", and submit it to the police. He calculates that he's brought the city hundreds of thousands of Euros in revenue.
Except the police ignore all of his reports because they're mostly nit-picky bullshit.
> Now in his 50s, Erp was 19 and still living in his hometown of Harare, Zimbabwe, when he got the call from a local shopkeeper telling him that a drunk driver had collided with his father, who was riding a motorbike. By the time he arrived on the scene, it was too late. He found his father’s body under a blanket. “I’m long past that”, he says in his thick Zimbabwean accent, swilling his tea. “But my feeling is that if I can save someone else that experience, then that’d be quite a good thing.”
While he probably does a good job, it seems a bit over the top. I don't see that much bad driving in central London. Quite a lot of iffy cycling though especially from the deliveroo guys.
- Filming his commutes - fine
- Reporting when people put him in harm's way - more than fine
- Reporting people he sees who don't endanger him personally but are breaking the rules and could create dangerous situations - probably fine, though getting a little iffy for me
- Going out of his way to look into people's cars and look for phone use - pretty iffy
- Deliberately creating confrontation and direct danger, out of other drivers illegal driving - too far for sure (look up "Gandalf corner")
It is sucky that the police don't do more of this enforcement. But as another London cyclist, he crosses the line that makes me feel less safe as a cyclist, due to the elevated level of hate cyclists receive.